A Crown of Golden Leaves: A Percy Jackson Fanfiction

Caput LXVI: Beyond the Rising Sun

"It's okay to run away in order to live." - Hiromu Arakawa

Caput LXVI: Beyond the Rising Sun

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ANNABETH was startled awake by the howling of the wind and the creaking of the old castle floors. Underneath the pillow, her hand curled around the knife that she had impulsively taken off Percy's writing desk last night (or earlier this evening), even though she kept her eyes closed. [1]

She listened with her ears, trying to keep her body loose and relaxed. She wasn't even sure why her instincts were practically screaming at her that something was wrong when it seemed perfectly normal. It was storming, yes, and that epidemic was running rampant still, of course, but other than that there was nothing out of place.

Am I dreaming? But no, if she was dreaming, she wouldn't even think of asking that question... so that meant she had to be awake.

Something clamped around her shoulder. With a stifled scream, she opened her eyes and brandished her knife somewhere above her shoulder. Somebody cursed and they let go of her. She scrambled across the bed, still clutching her knife in her hand. She should have slept with her saber next to the bed, but she had put it next to Percy's spare sword as she usually did.

"Did you always sleep with a knife in your hand?" a familiar voice grumbled.

"Nico?!" she snarled, fear making her tone harsher than she meant it to be.

"Yes, who else would it be? Ow, my cheek is stinging... I can't believe you can sleep with a sharp blade underneath your head like that. Don't you realize you could cut yourself?"

I'll give you another cut to match the current one if you don't explain why you're in my bedroom. Her eyes weren't adjusting to the darkness, so she couldn't even see him. "Nico, I'm married. Why in Tartarus are you in my bedroom? You do realize this is inappropriate, right?" She paused, and then patted at the empty space where Percy usually slept. Wait, he's not here. Did something happen? "Is Percy okay?"

"Well..."

Her insides clenched. She recognized that tone of voice even though she only heard it rarely—he always used it when he had bad news that he should tell her, but didn't think she was strong enough to handle it. "Tell me."

"Octavius Caesar woke Luke and I at octava noctis hora[2]. He was acting rather uncharacteristically as we went to wake Praetor Reyna... he seemed nervous, and he kept saying he made a mistake, before he left us. Luke heard a disturbance in the courtyard, so we parted ways. Reyna was with us at first, but..." And here he stopped, as if he was hesitant to continue.

"What happened?"

"Eris, or Discordia—she tried to stop us from getting to you. Was saying something about sacrifices and elder Olympian Blood and freeing the protogenoi. Nox, specifically. So, Praetor Reyna distracted her, then Luke went to the courtyard, and I came here to see if you were here. I wasn't expecting you to be asleep."

"It's the middle of the night. What else would you be expecting?"

Nico didn't answer her, but he was staring at a fixed point on the wall somewhere to the right, above one of the chairs. The intensity behind his stare was somewhat close to a glare, so she followed his gaze, where she saw a pink stain that had probably come from blood. Whose? But that wasn't a question that she had time to consider.

So, Percy was missing, there were immortals running rampant in the halls, and Luke had gone off to be a hero. That wasn't even counting the ruler of Rome, who had apparently known about this and had woken Nico, Luke, and Reyna. How had Octavius Caesar known if there had been nothing out of the ordinary?